Hemant Mehta graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with degrees in Mathematics and Biology. While there, he also helped establish their first secular student group, Students WithOut Religious Dogma (SWORD). He earned his Masters in Math Education at DePaul University and currently teaches high school math in the suburbs of Chicago.
He has worked with the Center for Inquiry and the Secular Coalition for America, received scholarships from American Atheists and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and now serves on the board of directors for Foundation Beyond Belief (a charity organization targeting non-theistic donors) and is the former chair of the board of the Secular Student Alliance (which creates and supports college atheist groups nationwide).
Hemant has appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and his book, I Sold My Soul on eBay (WaterBrook Press), was released in 2007.
His blog, the winner of the 2011 Bloggie award for Best Weblog About Religion, can be read at FriendlyAtheist.com.
You can reach him at friendlyatheist@friendlyatheist.com.
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In a way Richard Wade was born in the Temple of Science because his parents worked in a major Natural History museum as exhibit designers and illustrators. Their friends were paleontologists, geologists, entomologists, historians and the like, so Richard was brought up on a steady diet of science. As a child, he enjoyed going out on archeological digs or hunting for fossils with the professionals, or helping with specimens in the lab.
He has two Master’s degrees, the first in Art and the second in Educational Psychology. He has worked as an artist and as a Marriage and Family Counselor with many years in the specialization of addiction medicine, having counseled more than ten thousand patients. Now retired, he lives in California with his wife and enjoys amateur astronomy, hiking in the Sierras, fossil hunting and making figurative sculptures.
After contributing various articles on Friendly Atheist for 20 months, at Hemant’s suggestion in July of 2009 he began writing an advice column called “Ask Richard.” Twice a week, he publishes his responses to email letters from people of all viewpoints, not just atheists. These usually deal with challenges or conflicts stemming from believers and nonbelievers living or working together. He hopes to reduce unnecessary strife and suffering on all sides.
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Jesse Galef has worked for both the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition for America. He is currently Communications Director for the Secular Student Alliance.
He grew up in Silver Spring, MD, a suburb of Washington DC. He then went off to the University of North Carolina, graduating in 2008 with a degree in Political Science. He was the president of the Non-religious Student Association there, but was also an active member of the Orthodox Christian Fellowship and the Christian Apologetics of Carolina. He likes making friends with different views, and feels that he gains a better understanding through his discussions with them.
Jesse was raised in a secular household, where his family celebrated both Chanukah and Christmas. There was nothing religious about it, they just liked eating latkes and giving out presents.
In his spare time, Jesse likes to read, breakdance, and play board games. Although he might be young in years, a lifetime of soccer, hockey, and breakdancing has left his joints feeling considerably older than he is.
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Born in Houston, Texas, Katherine Malone received her undergraduate degree in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago in 2006 and her law degree from Columbia University in 2011.
You can reach her at kamyjd@gmail.com.
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Carrie Clark graduated from Augustana College, in Rock Island, Illinois in 2008 with a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science. She received a J.D. from The John Marshall Law School, in Chicago, in 2012. Besides being a newly-minted job-seeking J.D., she is a semi-professional artist who believes strongly in public service.
Carrie is also a Calvin and Hobbes fan, and you can reach her at cbc{at}stupendousman[dot]com.
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Emileigh Clare was born in Virginia and raised in Texas. As a child, she went to many different churches on a regular basis including Methodist, Romanian Orthodox, Baptist and Church of Christ. Nonbelief came in junctures, starting with being told dogs don’t go to heaven and not comprehending why, if God is so good, did he kill those first-born Egyptian kids? As a teen, she hid in church bathrooms reading Greek mythology and the Animorphs series instead of going to religious services. Now she’s a journalist in Southern Pennsylvania who prefers to spend her free time being a gym rat, attempting to cook something besides scrambled eggs and sharing margarita pitchers with all of the amazing people in her life. She’s also obsessed with fashion, traveling, pop culture and crazy-good shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Veronica Mars.” Follow her on Twitter @E__Clare.
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Amanda Johnson is a 2010 graduate of Purdue University in English education. While in undergrad, she realized that she was both a feminist and an impassioned advocate for social justice, which strongly colors her worldview to this day. She performed, directed, and organized performances of The Vagina Monologues over her three-year involvement, as well as the co-editing a zine that highlighted local poetry, prose, and artwork with a friend.
Amanda was raised in a “non-denominational Bible-believing” church, attending Sunday school, regular church services, and Wednesday night youth group for the first 18 years of her life. She must be a smart cookie, since it only took a three-year evolution from “spiritual” passion to apathy to disdain to repugnance to actual critical analysis, at which point she changed her Facebook from “don’t know don’t care” to “atheist.”
She currently lives in Chicago with her husband and her cat, Buster, and swimming in the uncertain waters of the Real World beyond the Ivory Tower. She’s not sure when or how she’ll take over the world, but it’s on her “to-do” list. Right after she finishes this blog post. She can be reached at am.manning87@gmail.com.
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Kelley Freeman is a junior at the University of South Carolina majoring in Russian language with a minor in Sociology. She is currently the president of the Pastafarians at USC. For the summer of 2011, Kelley worked as the summer intern for the Secular Student Alliance (and it was AWESOME). In fall of 2010, she helped coordinate and organize the Columbia Leadership Summit with the SSA.
She may continue her studies after graduation, but her true passion is working within the secular movement. Kelley puts a heavy emphasis on doing service work within her group and providing an awesome community for non-religious students.
She was an honorable mention (woo!) for the 2011 American Atheists’ scholarship.
Other than Pastafarians, Kelley works as a vice president of service with the service sorority Omega Phi Alpha and has previous worked for student housing as a Resident Mentor. She can also crochet like a fiend.
In her free time, she blogs about crochet and cats at http://ramenneedles.com in case you’re interested.
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Megan Wells is a computer tech by day and a sports blogger by night. She lives in Chicago, roots desperately for the Cubs, and tries hard to ignore the obvious parallels between a World Series win and Jesus’ second coming.
Megan was raised Catholic in Texas by scientist parents, who sowed the seed of critical thinking. She gave up religion for good during her college years. Now she spends her Sundays watching sports, cooking crazy foods, and playing video games. She writes about baseball at Aerys Sports, and you can follow her on Twitter at @Cubsessed (for baseball) and @girl_noir (for everything else).
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Lauren Kalal works in a customer service call center for a major online retailer doing pretty much everything but answering telephone calls (for the moment, anyway). She was raised in a Seventh-Day Adventist home and only found out she was an atheist in her early 20s. She’s had the wonderful opportunity to live in both Japan and Turkey for several years but is now back in Washington state.
For fun, Lauren loves reading on her Kindle, playing RPG video- and tabletop-games, costuming, as well as hanging out with her friends and a good mixed drink. It’s important to note that she also has an unhealthy obsession with Les Miserables, owning three different copies of the book along with four different English language versions of the musical as well as recordings in French, German, and Japanese.
You’re welcome to email her at lklalakla at gmail dot com for any reason, but especially if you find a version of Les Miserables that she doesn’t have yet.
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Emily Dietle was raised in Houston, TX. She spent most summers visiting family in western Pennsylvania, where she grew a fondness for astronomy, nature, fossils, and antiques.
Raised in a Protestant Christian home, Emily began a journey out of religion in her teens, and is now an active atheist focused on Church/State and women/gay rights issues.
Outside of her day job, she enjoys reading, blogging, and gaming. In 2009 she began doing freelance web design with the goal of helping small businesses and organizations. During 2011, she was on the planning committee for the Texas Freethought Convention that was co-hosted by the Atheist Alliance of America.
Currently, Emily is an organizer for the Houston Atheists, and can be found on Twitter at @emilyhasbooks or emily@emilyhasbooks.com.
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M J Shepherd‘s first ever moment of non-belief occurred when he was very young, in a Sunday School class about the healing powers of Jesus. He was reported to have said, “I don’t need Jesus, I have band-aids!”
It’s been downhill from there.
He graduated in 2009 with a BA in studio art and a minor in art history, from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was president of the Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics club there as well.
Before reaching college, he gadded about with the Boy Scouts, lollygagging his way to Eagle Scout rank and promptly forgetting every knot ever learned save the square knot, and was enrolled at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts – Riverfront, a specially designed high school for artistic students in the New Orleans area. Perhaps even… intelligently designed.
You can email him at mshepkilre2@hotmail.com.
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Bentley Owen was raised by Christian parents with nine siblings and was home-schooled through the 8th grade. He studied English at Westminster College in Fulton, MO, and served in the Navy for two years. He currently lives in Tulsa, OK.
His e-mail is zyxek1 [at] gmail. He is happy to receive tips and links regarding how atheism, skepticism, and religion are portrayed in media and popular culture.
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Rudis Muiznieks is a software engineer and Canadian ex-pat living in Florida. He was raised in a non-religious home and has identified as an atheist since a young age. He also had a borderline-obsessive interest in all things paranormal — UFOs, aliens, Bigfoot, conspiracy theories, astral projection, you name it! By his late teens, years of reading, debating, learning, and several “experiments” that he’s too embarrassed to discuss nowadays (without a few beers in him first) finally led him to the conclusion that all of those things are the product of overactive imaginations, and lapses in rational thought.
After following his future wife to the United States and finding himself with an overabundance of free time due to an immigration status that didn’t allow him to work, Rudis decided to launch Cectic, a semi-weekly comic strip with a decidedly skeptical bent. Now that he has real job and far less free time, you can find his ongoing sporadic comical pursuits here on the Friendly Atheist. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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At a young age, Bengie was drawn to good stories from television, movies, comics, and even the occasional novel. After absorbing tales of ancient Gilgamesh to distant Galifrey, he noticed something odd. The story he had been raised to believe had the narrative structure of a fan-fiction of a fan-fiction. It was peculiar. Downright funny even. So funny, in fact, that he started drawing a Wednesday Webcomic about religion, science and skepticism!
Bengie also runs a Zombie De-Animation service from www.slackjawcomic.com.
